Hello! And welcome to Book Nerd Reviews’ stop on the Australian We Were Liars Blog Tour! Last week I posted my review for this phenomenal book, and today we are holding a a Q&A with E. Lockhart, as well as an awesome giveaway for We Were Liars! We have not 1, but 3 copies of this hauntingly beautiful book to give away!

Synopsis: A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island.

A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.

A group of four friends – the Liars – whose friendship turns destructive.

A revolution. An accident. A secret.

Lies upon lies.

True love.

The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense that will leave you reeling.

Author Bio

Emily Lockhart is the author of eight YA novels including The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book, a finalist for the National Book Award, and recipient of the Cybils Award for best young adult novel. She has a doctorate in English Literature from Columbia University and has taught composition, literature and creative writing. Her books have been translated into ten languages.

Q&A with Emily Lockhart

If you could describe We Were Liars in three words, what would they be?
Three words: I won’t tell.

What inspired you to write We Were Liars?
Private islands. Broken hearts. First loves. Family secrets. King Lear. Wuthering Heights. Fairy tales.

Why did you write We Were Liars with such an unreliable narrator?
Cadence, my heroine, is just telling the truth as best she knows it.

There are a lot of complex personalities in We Were Liars, are there any characters, or character traits, that you relate to?
Cadence Sinclair Eastman falls in love with a boy, Gat Patil, who is an outsider to her highly privileged family. I relate to Gat a lot – though I am obviously not an Indian-American teenage male. He is passionate and political, a reader – and he’s in the complicated position of having one foot in each of two very different worlds. I often had that, growing up. I was brought up in a commune and went to prep school, was Jewish and Christian, had parents who divorced early and lived in different cities – lots of split identities.

Is there anything you like, dislike, admire or envy about any of the characters personalities?
Cadence is remarkably brave and also open-hearted, despite her many other faults.

Were you a liar growing up? And did this influence the story, or the characters, at all?
No. I am a truth-teller to a fault and sometimes hurt people’s feelings that way.

What inspired you to write the fairy tale stories within We Were Liars?
The fairy tales are Cadence’s way of telling truths about her family that she cannot speak any other way. I own many fairy tale collections and have read them over and over.

Other than those that mentioned in We Were Liars, what books would we find on Cady’s and Gat’s bookshelf?
Gat would probably have some James Baldwin, Nadine Gordimer, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri. Political writings and political literary fiction. Cadence would have Philip Pullman’s recent retellings of the Grimm fairy tales, plus Evelyn Waugh and Edith Wharton, which she’d read to make sense of her privileged world.

And finally, what is your motto?
Read widely.

Giveaway Details

Thanks to Allen & Unwin, you have a chance to win 1 of 3 copies of We Were Liars!!!

This giveaway is for Australian residents only, and will be sent directly to the winner from Allen & Unwin. The giveaway starts now and will run through to 8th September, when a winner will be picked via the Rafflecopter widget below! Everyone gets a free entry and you will get more entries if you share about the giveaway or follow us. Best of luck! x